Life & Style Columns

Ask Amy

Dear Amy: My 50th high school reunion is coming up. I've had so much fun catching up with people I haven't seen in decades on our class's social media page. I'm a married woman and have been writing to both men and women from my graduation class. One guy I caught up with used to work with me back...

Dear Amy: My husband recently confessed to me that he was unfaithful four years ago. We had a great life, or so I thought. I was completely devastated and contemplated leaving him, but I was pregnant with our fifth child. Now I see him making changes to live an honest life. I am trying to forgive...

Dear Amy: Our 25-year-old daughter was a strong, compassionate, emphatic, loving person until her upcoming wedding turned her into a self-centered brat. We gladly gave her some money to offset wedding expenses, and then things went haywire. She has told everyone the cost of her wedding is $350/plate...

JeanMarie Brownson

Friends sometimes apologize to me for being strictly meat and potatoes lovers. No problem. I enjoy cooking both. Offering a flavorful finishing sauce proves key to pleasing everyone. I turn to the brilliance of Argentina’s meat and robust condiment culture for inspiration. Argentina’s love of beef...

Friends sometimes apologize to me for being strictly meat and potatoes lovers. No problem. I enjoy cooking both. Offering a flavorful finishing sauce proves key to pleasing everyone. I turn to the brilliance of Argentina’s meat and robust condiment culture for inspiration. Argentina’s love of beef...

My cycling instructor resolves to only buy what she truly loves so she buys less. I posit that if you cook what you truly love, you will enjoy the process more. Take cassoulet for example. I adore this humble French casserole. Full of toothsome white beans, sausages, pork, lamb and duck, topped...

Bill Daley

Coffee seemed so simple when I was a kid in the 1960s. All the grown-ups seemed to need was a kettle of boiling water, a spoonful or two of instant coffee, a little sugar, some half-and-half and a pack of Parliament cigarettes. Today, the household air is markedly cleaner without the smokes, but...

It was a chance conversation with a journalism school professor that impelled Robert W. Fieseler to search out the story of a long-ago and largely — and in many cases, willfully — forgotten fire in a New Orleans gay bar that killed 32 people. That professor had been what Fieseler called a “baby...

It was a chance conversation with a journalism school professor that impelled Robert W. Fieseler to search out the story of a long-ago and largely — and in many cases, willfully — forgotten fire in a New Orleans gay bar that killed 32 people. That professor had been what Fieseler called a “baby...

James P. DeWan

Although it helps, you needn’t be an utter crackpot to believe that the prehistoric artworks adorning the caves of Western Europe are actually primitive menus. Sadly, though, those chef’s degustations at Thakk’s of Grobnork left much to be desired, as the peeps of the Pleistocene knew little and...

Here’s a thought: if the heart is the symbolic representation of Valentine’s Day, instead of serving our lovers chocolate on that ballyhooed holiday of love, perhaps we should be feeding them organ meats. No? Chocolate it is, then. But, can we at least shed that tired old “sweets for the sweet”...

Here’s a thought: if the heart is the symbolic representation of Valentine’s Day, instead of serving our lovers chocolate on that ballyhooed holiday of love, perhaps we should be feeding them organ meats. No? Chocolate it is, then. But, can we at least shed that tired old “sweets for the sweet”...

Leah Eskin

The first recipe I published was a fail. I was writing a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine — not a food column, more of a ruminative ramble — and, after the World Trade Center crumbled, I tacked on a recipe for calm: chocolate-chip cookies. I made cookies regularly, ritually,...

The first recipe I published was a fail. I was writing a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine — not a food column, more of a ruminative ramble — and, after the World Trade Center crumbled, I tacked on a recipe for calm: chocolate-chip cookies. I made cookies regularly, ritually,...

American pie is a sweet tradition — apple, pumpkin, chocolate. But in Britain, pie is baked up savory — pork, duck, chicken, pigeon, sausage, pork. And how. Meat pie is packed right to the ridges — no slick sauce or crisp carrot distraction. Heated, plunked on a pool of mashed potatoes and doused...

Bill St. John

Pasta is pretty easy to pair with wine; any starch is. It's what's on top that matters to the match. This dish sports cooked-down mushrooms, which contain a lot of the "fifth" taste called umami (a savory, salivating taste first isolated by the Japanese). Other high-umami foods: Parmigiano-Reggiano,...

You could enjoy these tidbits right from the oven, or also at room or ambient temperature — at a picnic, say. In any event, the wine should be crisp and refreshing; you need especially to squeegee away the salt and fat of cheese and egg. If the wine is red, it would be great if it were slightly...

A fair amount of sweetness in this grilled shrimp recipe (honey, of course, but also the "sweet" meat of shellfish) suggests a wine choice with a bit of residual sugar — an off-dry riesling, perhaps. As much as many folk eschew wines with sweetness — it's perhaps the most common wine dis — sweet...

Candace Jordan

Chicago Tribune columnist Candace Jordan will receive Eversight Illinois' Woman of Vision award for her dedication to philanthropy in the Chicago community. Eversight, formerly Midwest Eye-Banks, is an international organization dedicated to eye banking and corneal transplants to preserve and restore...

More than 700 guests attended the 16th annual Kandy Kane Ball at Joe's on Weed Street, helping fulfill the holiday dreams of underprivileged kids by collecting over 1,000 toys for distribution through Chicago Children's Charities. The Dec. 8 party with a purpose featured live entertainment from...

More than 250 guests attended the sixth annual Evening With iF Charities on Nov. 17 at South Loop’s 19 East Event Gallery. Hosted by Israel "Izzy" Idonije, the event raised more than $175,000 to support at-risk youth in underserved communities. Sports stars, community leaders and fans came out...

Scott Kleinberg

Dear readers, This is my last So Social column. After nearly 11 years in Chicago and at the Chicago Tribune, I'm off to new adventures in New York. RELATED: TRENDING LIFE & STYLE NEWS THIS HOUR I want to use this space to convey the most important things I've learned in my 4 1/2 years of writing...

The future seems like an appropriate theme this week. You see, this is my penultimate So Social. After almost 11 years at the Tribune and about 4 1/2 writing the column, I'm off to a new adventure in New York. No one knows what the future holds. Doc Brown told Marty that people shouldn't know too...

By now, you probably have heard that more than 800,000 people watched intently on Facebook Live while two Buzzfeed employees tried blowing up a watermelon using nothing but rubber bands. Yes. Live video of a watermelon. The suspense built for 45 minutes until the melon exploded. Millions of people...

Josh Noel

Flagships are faltering. Fortunately for them, there’s Flagship February. The monthlong initiative, launched in a burst of social media inspiration by Canadian beer writer Stephen Beaumont, is meant to highlight “the flagship beers that got us here,” according to the Flagship February website. ...

Weeks after Chicago claimed the crown for most breweries in the nation, the news gets even better: Illinois is home to some of the cheapest beer prices in the U.S. According to a study by the website Simple Thrifty Living, the average price of a 24-pack of Bud Light or Miller Lite in Illinois is...

The beer: Mind Haze (Firestone Walker Brewing, Paso Robles, Calif.), a hazy IPA. The back story: We’re several years into the haze craze — that is, the ascendance of low-bitterness, fruit-forward India pale ales — and the largest craft breweries have taken notice. Sierra Nevada and Boston Beer...

Heidi Stevens

A cheerleading squad at a Kenosha high school has attracted the American Civil Liberties Union’s attention after a parent complained that girls were being given “Big Boobie” and “Big Booty” awards. By their coaches. In 2018. In real life. Not a Seth MacFarlane movie. At last year’s annual banquet...

When I read that the last day of Trevor Wehner’s life was the first day of his internship at Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, I thought about Dayna Less. Less was in her first year of a pharmacy residency at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center when a gunman opened fire there in November. She walked off an...

However Rebel Wilson’s “Isn’t It Romantic” does at the box office this weekend, I hope it’s not the beginning of a genre. I hope, in fact, it’s the end of a genre. The genre, that is, that stars a female whose body type veers beyond our conventional beauty standards, but only because she’s not...